As I may have mentioned before, I am currently going through the process of recording all the records I currently have here… hmmm… about 2000 of them! I think I must be about one third of the way through and recording more everyday. During this I have developed a system to get vinyl records clean that works very well, it also reduces static and makes the records sound really good. This is how it goes.

Step 1: Clean the record using AM Record Cleaner Fluid This is the best stuff I have ever used for this job. I tend to use 4 or 5 squirts all around, paying particular attention to the outside and inside run-outs as this is where the dirt tends to collect especially if you are DJ’ing with the vinyl and grubby finger are getting all over it, then rub off the excess with the provided cloth.

Step 2: Play the record through at least once with the counter weight on the turntable turned to up to maximum weight. If the record is very dirty and has noticeable dirt patches on it, as the record plays, you should notice small specks of dirt lift out of the groove and lay on the record surface. Now take your cloth and carefully brush the specks off being careful not to push the dirt back into the groove.

Step 3: Now if your record was very dirty or if really want to make sure things are clean you can use the AM Record Cleaner again. You may also want to do this if the record is a 33rpm album or very old, because the recording on these tend to be quitter and the static will be more obvious.

Step 4: Play your record, record it if you want. Then put it back on the shelf and never play it again….

AM Record Cleaner

So I have a gig this coming Saturday. It’s a friends birthday party and a few other friends and DJ’s that I know are playing at it as well. I was chatting to one of them yesterday evening, DJ Unknown, and I casually mention that ‘I think this venue only has CDJ’s‘, he starts to panic because he has never played from CDJ’s before! I’ve never done a gig in front of a club from CDJ’s before either, we both use DJDecks  exclusively from SL1200’s using SSL Vinyl but at least I have a secondhand CDJ800 which I bought for this express purpose…. the day when I did a gig and there are no SL1200’s avaliable, this is that day! So today I spent a few hours practicing on the single CDJ that I have and making sure DJDecks is set up correctly… sweet… no problems, things worked perfectly, in fact I think I was mixing better on the CDJ than I have on the SL1200’s over the last few weeks.

One important thing to note, if you are using a CDJ with a U46DJ interface then the output of the CDJ will be too loud for the U46DJ. So you will need to do one of two things, either buy four attenuater and put them between the CDJ’s and the sound card, -15dB should be good enough, or simply burn a timecode CD that has a maximum level of -15dB, ie: drop the level of the timecode 15dB, you can do with with Wavelab, Audacity or some sort of wave editing software. The reason for this is because the output of the CDJ is at +4dB and the input of the U46DJ is -10dB a difference of 14dB, if you drop the level by 15dB the you will have 1dB of headroom which seems to work perfectly!

Also I’ve be playing around with a new skin. I’ve been using the SPM skin for years but today I tried out the VCSkin… very nice. Much simpler interface and only has information that is important when using vinyl control. Also the font for the file browser is smaller so more info fits on the screen, also nice…..

Gig tonight, It’s DJ Shades birthday so make sure you are there !!